Pakistan Goes All Out To Deny Role In Mumbai Terror Attacks
"Whoever is responsible for the brutal and crude act against the Indian people and India are looking for reaction," Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari said in an interview with Indian CNN-IBN television.
"We have to rise above them and make sure ourselves, yourself and world community guard against over-reaction," he said according to an interview transcript issued by the Press Trust of India.
After Pakistan's cabinet held emergency talks Saturday to discuss Indian accusations of cross-border involvement in the attacks that killed 195 people, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi moved to allay New Delhi's suspicions.
"Any entity or group involved in the ghastly act, the Pakistani government will proceed against it," he told reporters in a televised press conference after the hastily arranged cabinet meeting.
"They (India) are suspecting that perhaps groups, organizations that could be involved in these attacks that could have a presence here," he said.
"What we have said is if they have information, if they have evidence, they should share it with us."
New Delhi has in the past accused rival Pakistan, and particularly its Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, spy agency, of helping militants attack Indian targets, including the Indian embassy in Kabul earlier this year.
A December 2001 attack on India's parliament in New Delhi, which India also blamed on Pakistan, brought the two countries to the brink of war as the neighbors amassed armies at the border.
Saturday's cabinet meeting to avert another crisis with India came after Islamabad backtracked, deciding not to send the ISI chief to Mumbai to help the investigations into the attacks there, after earlier saying it would.
Qureshi sought to downplay the U-turn, saying there had never been an agreement for such a visit.
"Indians did not request for a visit. It's too early for them and for us," he said.
He added the ISI would cooperate with the Indian government and the investigation of the attacks.
The latest Indian allegations that "elements" in Pakistan were behind the Mumbai attacks surprised the new democratic government in Islamabad, which has repeatedly vowed to work with India to combat terrorism in the region.
Tensions between the rivals have been easing amid a slow-moving peace process aimed at settling their decades-old feud over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, which triggered two of their three wars.
Meanwhile, Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is fighting Indian rule in Kashmir and was blamed for the 2001 attack on India's parliament, denied any involvement in the Mumbai killings.
Similarly, the chief of the United Jihad Council, an umbrella group for over a dozen Kashmiri militant groups, also denied any role in the Mumbai attack.
"We very strongly condemn the attacks on innocent civilians in Mumbai and say it categorically that none of the Kashmiri freedom fighting groups has anything to do with it," group leader Syed Salahuddin said in a statement.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 29, 2008 11:30 ET (16:30 GMT)
Publié le 29 novembre 2008 Copyright © 2008 Dowjones
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